1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image scanning device and method for scanning document images to produce image data, an image display controlling device and method for acquiring image data to control display of an image, an image processing system including the image scanning and image display controlling devices, and computer programs for realizing the image scanning and image display controlling devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Office automation (OA) equipment, which scans a document image with an image sensor such as a charge coupled device (CCD) to perform processing on the acquired image data, is often present in offices. This OA equipment may be, for example, a copier, a facsimile, a scanner, a digital multifunction peripheral, or the like. For example, a copier forms an image based upon scanned image data on printing paper. A facsimile transmits scanned image data to another facsimile communication equipment. A scanner stores scanned image data in a storing device of its own, and transmits the image data to another device such as a personal computer (PC). A digital multifunction peripheral is equipped with the functions of these plurality of pieces of OA equipment.
In a case of scanning document images of a plurality of documents in such OA equipment, when a double-sided document and a document with one side being a blank page are mixed among the documents, it is desirable that image data corresponding to the blank page can be eliminated (hereinafter referred to as blank-page elimination) before storing image data obtained by scanning the document images into a memory and before forming images based upon the image data on printing paper.
An image scanning device is known in which whether or not a document is a blank page is determined based upon image data obtained by scanning document images. The document is subjected to blank-page elimination when determined as being a blank page. An image input/output device further known in which a result of determining whether or not an inputted image (herein, the same as image data) is a blank page is once stored as an attribute of the image along with image data, and image data having an attribute of a blank page is eliminated (blank-page elimination), to output image data without the attribute of the blank page.
On the other hand, for example, in the case of displaying a double-sided document in a device for obtaining image data produced by the foregoing image scanning device and in a device for inputting image data outputted from the foregoing image input/output device, it is desirable not to eliminate a blank page regarding the acquired and inputted image data in order to display the blank page blank as it is.